My mom asked me to describe the difference between the two social network behemoths, and I came up with the following metaphor:

MySpace is a 12-year-old Korean girl, and Facebook is a 28-year-old hot school teacher.

I think that adequately sums up the offerings of each system. For some more in-depth analyses, you can check out what used to be an Ebaum's World video. Remember Ebaum's World? I certainly don't.

When the social networks first started clamoring for my attention those many years ago, I was their dream customer. A single, twenty-something, college-going, computer-nerd male... that's like MySpace gold. But I avoided any and all social networks like the effing plague. Something rubbed me the wrong way about the nature of their services. I can't really explain it.

Eventually, I joined because I wanted to be able to keep in touch with some overseas acquaintances without all that International Calling Card nonsense. Apparently email was beyond my friends' capabilities.

This was back before MySpace started allowing people to design their own profile pages. Yeah, brilliant. Give people with no experience building websites complete access to HTML and CSS. I mean, what precisely the fuck were they thinking? It's just asking for trouble. Not just in the form of malware, hacks and viruses, but in really bad design.

WARNING - Holier-than-thou designer rant begins here.

Like most designers, I use Apple Macintosh computers to get things done. Back in the mid-nineties, before Steve Jobs emerged victorious from his death match with the CEO that ousted him, Apple was in serious trouble. One of their problems was sales; they just weren't moving enough products. They couldn't understand why. They were doing exactly what their competitors were doing, i.e. offering a huge product line with all kinds of obscure names and numbers like Perfoma 2800 and Quadramatic 3849.

When Jobs came back, he simplified. By reducing the product line from 12 computers to 2, he saved the company. Why? Because consumers don't want to have to choose which system is the best for them. They want to know it instinctively.

Which is what Facebook is like. You don't have a bunch of completely unnecessary and ultimately harmful options from which to choose. You have only what you need in an elegant package that can quickly and easily give you what you came for.

END OF RANT

In other news, I'm still "Singing-In-The-Rain" in love with the Netflix Watch Instantly service, but who isn't?

Isitfunnytoday.com is a website that shows you a random webcomic and asks you if it's funny or not. It's like StumbleUpon, but specifically for webcomics.

Our site has been accepted into the fold, meeting some criteria that I imagine are more to do with technical specifications (our RSS feed is pristine) than with us being anything resembling funny, but either way we're on the list!

But not just any list. Oh no. The Crooked Gremlins, the humble comic of which you are a loyal reader, was today on the top 20 list of sites that include XKCD, Penny Arcade and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

If that doesn't make you feel special, I don't have anything that will. In the likely case that whatever counting error that put us on the top 20 list is resolved, I took a screenshot. Here, let me share it with you.

Just in case they delete it.

Everyone needs to go and vote yes for us, though. That's what'll keep us on that top 20 list, and that's what'll keep more eyeballs coming in. Yeah, yeah, only vote yes if you think we're funny.

Wink.

UPDATE:

Okay, so we're off the top 20 list. We're still in the upper quadrant, but we're off the front page. I have suppressed the very real urge to go and vote Not Funny on every comic that was in front of us, but I took the high road.

Which is to say, I need you all to take the low road for us.

UPDATE 2:

Um, this is awkward. Apparently, some people have mistaken my previous comment about the "low road" to mean that I wanted you guys to go to the website and vote against other webcomics out of spite. NO! Bad humans. That's not what I meant.